'ther! what I have already eaten and worn, as I came thus far, 'would endow a considerable Hospital of Incurables."—66 Man, 'indeed," I would answer, "has a Digestive Faculty, which must 'be kept working, were it even partly by stealth. But as for our 'Miseducation, make not bad worse; waste not the time yet 'ours, in trampling on thistles because they have yielded us no figs. Frisch zu Bruder! Here are Books, and we have brains 'to read them; here is a whole Earth and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look on them: Frisch zu!"

'Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even 'fire. We looked out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, where 'all at once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quar'tered: motley, not unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on 'it like brave youths. For myself, these were perhaps my most 'genial hours. Towards this young warmhearted, strongheaded ' and wrongheaded Herr Towgood, I was even near experiencing 'the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish Heathen 'that I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could have 'loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his bro'ther once and always. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and its wants. If man's Soul is indeed, as in the Fin'nish Language, and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of Stomach, 'what else is the true meaning of Spiritual Union but an Eating 'together? Thus we, instead of Friends, are Dinner-guests; and 'here as elsewhere have cast away chimeras.'

So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little incipient romance. What henceforth becomes of the brave Herr Towgood, or Toughgut? He has dived under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we see not where. Does any reader in the interior parts of England' know of such a man?

CHAPTER IV.

GETTING UNDER WAY.

THUS nevertheless,' writes our Autobiographer, apparently as quitting College, 'was there realised Somewhat; namely, I, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh: a visible Temporary Figure (Zeitbild), 'occupying some cubic feet of Space, and containing within it 'Forces both physical and spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; 'the whole wondrous furniture, in more or less perfection, belong'ing to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities there were in me to 'give battle, in some small degree, against the great Empire of 'Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and Delver, with his spade, 'extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so leave a little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay your very Daymoth 'has capabilities in this kind; and ever organises something (into 'its own Body, if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and of mute dead air makes living music, though only of the faint'est, by humming.

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'How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who 'has learned, or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of 'Thought! Thaumaturgic I name it; for hitherto all Miracles 'have been wrought thereby, and henceforth innumerable will be 'wrought; whereof we, even in these days, witness some. Of 'the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and how it makes 'and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention; but cannot 'the dullest hear Steam-engines clanking around him? Has he 'not seen the Scottish Brassmith's IDEA (and this but a mechani'cal one) travelling on fire-wings round the Cape, and across two 'Oceans; and stronger than any other Enchanter's Familiar, on 'all hands unweariedly fetching and carrying: at home, not only 'weaving Cloth; but rapidly enough overturning the whole old system of Society; and, for Feudalism and Preservation of the

'Game, preparing us, by indirect but sure methods, Industrial'ism and the Government of the Wisest? Truly a Thinking Man 'is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every 'time such a one announces himself, I doubt not, there runs a 'shudder through the Nether Empire; and new Emissaries are 'trained, with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and hood'wink and handcuff him.

'With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of the Uni'verse, been called. Unhappy it is, however, that though born 'to the amplest Sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sove'reign right of Peace and War against the Time-Prince (Zeit'furst), or Devil, and all his Dominions, your coronation-ceremony 'costs such trouble, your sceptre is so difficult to get at, or even 'to get eye on!'

By which last wiredrawn similitude, does Teufelsdröckh mean no more than that young men find obstacles in what we call 'get'ting under way?' 'Not what I Have,' continues he, 'but what 'I Do is my Kingdom. To each is given a certain inward Talent, a certain outward Environment of Fortune; to each, by 'wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum of Capa'bility. But the hardest problem were ever this first: To find by study of yourself, and of the ground you stand on, what your 'combined inward and outward Capability specially is. For, alas, our young soul is all budding with Capabilities, and we see 'not yet which is the main and true one. Always too the new man is in a new time, under new conditions; his course can be 'the fac-simile of no prior one, but is by its nature original. And 'then how seldom will the outward Capabilitiy fit the inward: ' though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriendly, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what is worse than all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and often clutch the wrong 6 one in this mad work, must several years of our small term be 'spent, till the purblind Youth, by practice, acquire notions of 'distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their 'whole term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappoint'ment, shift from enterprise to enterprise, and from side to side:

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'till at length, as exasperated striplings of threescore and ten, 'they shift into their last enterprise, that of getting buried.

'Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the 'general fate; were it not that one thing saves us: our Hunger. 'For on this ground, as the prompt nature of Hunger is well 'known, must a prompt choice be made hence have we, with 'wise foresight, Indentures and Apprenticeships for our irra'tional young; whereby, in due season, the vague universality ' of a Man shall find himself ready-moulded into a specific Crafts'man; and so thenceforth work, with much or with little waste 'of Capability as it may be; yet not with the worst waste, that of time. Nay even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual art'ist too is born blind, and does not, like certain other creatures, 'receive sight in nine days, but far later, sometimes never,-is it 'not well that there should be what we call professions, or Bread'studies (Brodtzwecke), preappointed us? Here, circling like the 'gin-horse, for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the 'Bread-artist can travel contentedly round and round, till fancying that it is forward and forward; and realize much for him'self victual; for the world an additional horse's power in the 'grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of Economic Society. For me too 'had such a leading-string been provided; only that it proved 'a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I broke it. Then, ' in the words of Ancient Pistol, did the World generally become 'mine oyster, which I, by strength of cunning, was to open, as I 'would and could. Almost had I deceased (fast wär ich umge'kommen), so obstinately did it continue shut.'

We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was to befall our Autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, as it painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, through this Bag Pisces, and those that follow. A young man of high talent, and high though still temper, like a young mettled colt, 'breaks off his neck-halter,' and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced in. Richest cloverfields tempt his eye; but to him they are forbidden pasture: either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer

stone walls, which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him; till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way: not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness where existence is still possible, and Freedom though waited on by Scarcity is not without sweetness. In a word, Teufelsdröckh having thrown up his legal Profession, finds himself without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided Belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity urges him on; Time will not stop, neither can he, a Son of Time; wild passions without solacement, wild faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate him. He too must enact that stern Monodrama, No Object and no Rest; must front its successive destinies, work through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can.

Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his 'neck-halter' sat nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off. If we look at the young man's civic position, in this Nameless Capital, as he emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern well that it was far from enviable. His first Law-Examination he has come through triumphantly; and can even boast that the Examen Rigorosum need not have frightened him but though he is hereby an Auscultator of respectability' what avails it? There is next to no employment to be had. Neither, for a youth without connexions, is the process of Expectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his disposition much cheered from without. My fellow Auscultators,' he says, 'were 'Auscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked articulate Small specu'words; other vitality shewed they almost none. 'lation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! Sense neither 'for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, 'save only for the faintest scent of coming Preferment.' In which words, indicating a total estrangement on the part of Teufelsdröckh, may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity? Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much more impossible, to despise him. Friendly communion, in any case, there could not be already has the young